Finished!

I finished my rug today! I think it turned out great, and the cable pattern is beautiful on this color. It's ready for some shoes!

Progression

I'm really quite excited about this project. I've been wanting to learn to cable knit since I found a beautiful sweater pattern last winter, but I always thought it would be some incredibly difficult task, so I kept putting it off.
I finally bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and read about it in my beginners knitting book I made my very first scarf out of. I should have guessed, if it's in the beginner's knitting booklet, it can't be that hard.
After reading about it, I found a simple pattern that I modified to work on just the cabling, to get used to the vernacular. It seemed easy, so I started my first project, a shoe rug. I figured if I messed up terribly, it's just going to be covered by nasty shoes.
So far, I've only made 2 noticeable mistakes (to me, anyway), and I think it looks quite nice. I had 2 skeins of the yarn and I can't get any more, so this is the perfect use for it. I'm 5/8 of the way done! I'm also learning moss stitch, which looks great over a plane. It's a nice change from stockinette.
My mother-in-law likes it so much, she has commissioned a project for a cable knit sweater for my father-in-law. That will be a stretch in the future, though, as it will be my first sweater and knitting takes me a bit longer. I'm excited though!
Here's my progress so far on the rug...